That's what made me think of posting it here. I'm pretty sure I've seen it on Siskind's blog before.

Hope you're doing better btw

[*William Blake has entered the chat*](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Songs_of_Innocence_and_of_Experience%2C_copy_L%2C_1795_%28Yale_Center_for_British_Art%29_The_Human_Abstract.jpg/353px-Songs_of_Innocence_and_of_Experience%2C_copy_L%2C_1795_%28Yale_Center_for_British_Art%29_The_Human_Abstract.jpg) **The Human Abstract** Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody Poor: And Mercy no more could be, If all were as happy as we; And mutual fear brings peace; Till the selfish loves increase. Then Cruelty knits a snare, And spreads his baits with care... *(more at the link)*

Thoreau sucked

Because poverty is the result of political choices. I'm going to talk about international relations, since most EA-endorsed charities are things like handing out free malaria nets to Africans. Rich countries have used their position to continually bully less well-off countries, first through violent colonialism, and now, through imposing structural adjustment programs via the IMF and World Bank. It doesn't help either that the elites of poor countries are usually more interested in lining their own pockets than assisting their own people. If you'd like to read more on the subject, The Divide by Jason Hickel is an excellent overview. Anyway, effective altruism perpetrates the worldview that charity will remediate poverty, when the real problem is injustice. It's better than nothing, as it's unlikely that the citizens of the West will ever care enough to pressure their own elites to stop plundering Third World countries, but I do wish that the proponents of EA would at least recognize the structural injustices of the world and expand their lists of effective charities to include political organizations, such as BLM, and encourage EA adherents to advocate for policies like forgiving the debts of Third World countries. (This is a good overview on the importance of debt forgiveness: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/03/the-u-s-has-a-moral-obligation-to-forgive-the-worlds-debts) Colonialism has never ended. It's merely morphed from violent conquest and occupation to extreme financial abuse, backed up of course by the threat of violence. For EA to not recognize this and not challenge this, while selling itself as "effective," is sneerworthy.

It's not inherently bad, but 1. There are definitely people who justify terrible capitalistic practices with donations to EA causes 2. Theres a bunch of EA types who think the most important cause is "AI risk" by which they mean crazy scifi scenarios about machine gods, not the real risks from AI. So donating for malaria nets in africa is fine (I also don't think it's the end all and be all of charity), but EA has a lot of shitty stuff in the periphery which is why people make fun of it here.

My line on EA is always (and I have academic friends who agree): politics is prior to ethics EA generally places (almost universally utilitarian) ethics at the forefront, which is bad news for politics, because it opens the door to treating every problem anywhere in the world as a puzzle to be solved by working out where to put your money. In reality it doesn’t work like that, you can run whatever calculation you want, but people will still be people with interests and needs which will iteratively fuck up even your most well-developed ideas for how to solve any one puzzle if you don’t treat conceptualising human (or indeed human-animal) interaction on the political level as the fundamental way of achieving good goals

The idea of thinking carefully about where you can do the most good is a good one, but in practice, it winds up being indulgences for nerds - it doesn't matter how bad the other things you do or support are for the world, you gave some money in the best possible way so you're a good person!

\> cash that I would otherwise spend on bullshit Depending on the source of said bullshit, that might be more effective than a direct donation. One of the problems with EA is that it relies a lot on legibility (another concept they love but can't use for shit) to measure its "effectiveness", without making any note of the meta aspects of said measuring and being very ham-fisted about it. Choosing to spend your money on well-sourced and/or ethically-produced bullshit helps making it less bullshit-y.